Leaves Drop and the Stars Fall

Leaves Drop and the Stars Fall

Caleb Braun

When I was young my mother told me
God made the mountains 
to remind us that He was like the mountains,
jealous like the mountains,
so that we would not look away,
and all his children would fit between the cracked 
and snow flecked wings.

Now, I don’t know what I believe, only
it is not what I believed before. 
Each walk the squirrels 
swirl up the trees
as my dog squeals 
after them. Like her
I am barking up
your forest. Do I do
enough? Have I done 
enough? Am I 
this very day expecting
too much of your inventions?

Oh, it would be easier if you’d stop 
putting bird song discreetly
in the tight-knit seams of trees,
stop putting verses in Mom’s mouth
and Texas sun through her window,
stop putting above those mountains stars—
they may look like ears to you,
but to me they look like stories
all the dead spent their lives
trying to tell. To you they must look 
the way my T.V. looks to my dog:
she keeps glancing back at me,
she licks my face wondering why I won’t look away. 

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Caleb Braun
Poet & PhD Candidate

Caleb Braun holds an MA in English from the University of North Texas and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. He lives in Lubbock, Texas, where he is a PhD candidate in creative writing at Texas Tech University. He is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award from the University of Washington and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Crab Orchard Review, The Columbia Review, Harpur Palate, Arcturus, and elsewhere. 

Photography by Gage Forster